Crisis of the House Divided

Harry V. Jaffa titled his 1959 book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates Crisis of the House Divided. In the book Jaffa began the restoration of our understanding of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln. The prominent historian Allen Guelzo observed in the bibliographic essay that concludes his highly regarded biography of Lincoln that Crisis is “incontestably the greatest Lincoln book of the [twentieth] century.” Bill Kristol discreetly recommends the book to the attention of President-elect Obama in his interesting Times column today.